Book #21 - Our Mutual Friend
Nov. 24th, 2007 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janetlinO frabjous day! I think I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this book now. I did, as I have mentioned before, enjoy the story itself - the main, underlying story, that is - and I even appreciate the device of having lots of side-stories that all connect back to the central one. But at the same time I wish there hadn't been so many of them, and/or that Dickens hadn't been quite so wordy about them. Though I suppose then he wouldn't be Dickens, would he? So, yes, finished at last. Quite a slog, though not wholly un-enjoyable, as I wouldn't have bothered sticking with it to the end if it weren't.
It's hard to summarize due to all the aforementioned side-stories, but I'll try for the sake of those who - like myself - had never even heard of this book, though it's considered by Dickens scholars to be his greatest work: The main central point is the death of John Harmon, just as he returns to England to claim his fortune, and the subsequent dispensation of that fortune, and the fates of those people connected to it in varying degrees (which is everyone in the book). There are characters who have wealth and use it poorly, those who don't have wealth but pretend to, those who have it and don't care, those who don't have it and don't care, those who don't have it and want it, etc. In addition to being a story - a romance, really - about how people react to and interact with other people, it's also an examination of how people react to and interact with money (and the things money can buy) in mid-nineteenth century Britain.
Title: Our Mutual Friend
Author: Charles Dickens
Pages: 820
21 / 24 books. 88% done!
It's hard to summarize due to all the aforementioned side-stories, but I'll try for the sake of those who - like myself - had never even heard of this book, though it's considered by Dickens scholars to be his greatest work: The main central point is the death of John Harmon, just as he returns to England to claim his fortune, and the subsequent dispensation of that fortune, and the fates of those people connected to it in varying degrees (which is everyone in the book). There are characters who have wealth and use it poorly, those who don't have wealth but pretend to, those who have it and don't care, those who don't have it and don't care, those who don't have it and want it, etc. In addition to being a story - a romance, really - about how people react to and interact with other people, it's also an examination of how people react to and interact with money (and the things money can buy) in mid-nineteenth century Britain.
Title: Our Mutual Friend
Author: Charles Dickens
Pages: 820
